Congressman John Lewis (D, GA), icon of the ’60s civil rights movement that included beatings and arrests by authorities for participating in the movement’s marches and protests, said that he does not consider President-Elect Donald Trump to have been legitimately elected and so Trump will not legitimately be President.  He’s openly trading on that legacy of his deep past to lend a measure of credence to his current behavior.

It’s a sad state of affairs for the Democrat to take this attitude and to support others who take this attitude.

What Lewis is carefully omitting in his remarks is that those beatings and arrests were ordered by Democrats—the leadership, for instance, of states like Mississippi where Bloody Sunday occurred.  What Lewis is carefully forgetting is his racist slur that Tea Partiers protesting the passage of Obamacare on the steps of the Capital Building shortly after passage were themselves racist.  What Lewis is choosing not to acknowledge is that since that day he has done his best to obstruct whatever Republicans have tried to accomplish, not because he disagreed with the programs and bills being debated, but because they were Republican programs and bills rather than Democratic.

Lewis richly deserves that legacy.  All he is doing, though, is badly abusing and cheapening that legacy with his selective remembering, his recent behavior, and his latest behavior.  Democrats who condone any of this merely cheapen themselves and contribute to the abuse of Lewis’ distant past.